There's a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

One of the 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene, is the law to “Preach the Need for Change But Never Reform Too Much at Once” and it basically says to speak of needing to make changes in the related topic, but not to necessarily make those changes yourself. The theory behind this, as I understand it, is that as the advocate for reform you are in a position to accept credit if those changes prove successful, while simultaneously avoiding fault when the changes lead to detriment, as it was not you who enacted them.

In that vein, throughout the last decade or so that I have been in this business I have seen countless people come up and try to rise to leadership status by doing just this, and even former leaders doing this exact same thing. Saying that if only we (as a group of related businesses) made changes x and y, then more people would be successful. Or if we only did things differently, people would find it easier to succeed.

Combine that with the romanticizing of the past, and we end up with an echo chamber of people shouting the need for change, while not making any changes themselves.

We Don’t Need To Change

The internet as a whole has grown up quite a bit of the last twenty years, and so have consumers. The wants and needs of consumers are not what they were twenty years ago, and the fact that our market remains viable even today after so many others have come and gone is a real testament to our EXISTING ability to adapt and change to the needs of consumers and the constraints of constantly evolving technology. When I hear somebody trying to say that some drastic change is going to supercharge the industry as a whole, I can’t help but roll my eyes. I’ve watched it evolve over the last decade, as many of you have as well, and what the market really needs is not to reinvent itself, but to keep pulling on the threads and pushing what DOES work, to the further limits. The bread and butter for advertising businesses is creating conversions for your customers, and if for whatever reason you are unable to measure the conversion rate of your clients (FIGURE OUT HOW TO, THAT IS YOUR BUSINESS) then the second way to test is revenue. If you’re not converting, people won’t buy. If you are — then they will. If your business is experiencing growth, then keep doing what you are doing. It’s dangerous to start making drastic changes to your business if you are in a period of growth, you want to increase the growth and if you are at an early stage of business then the wrong decision could cost you that forward momentum. Tangent aside, changes are good if you need to see growth, but that’s not what Traffic Exchanges need right now.

We Need Community

The obstacles continue to fall onto the Traffic Exchange community, and not by the way of declining market share, but outside obstacles entirely. Payment processing companies have been wreaking havoc on our market. Business owners are being left in limbo searching to find a good payment processing solution. I can tell you from my own experience that this can be absolutely devastating to a business. If you cannot accept payments, then you are no longer in business. It’s as simple as that. The one’s that are facing these obstacles and yet still hang on and still fight and still search for that perfect payment processing solution deserve our support.

We don’t need radical changes or big updates to our business model, the model works. What we need is each other. We need to support the people who are digging in the trenches and fighting tooth and nail to be able to provide a service for you. It’s been a rough couple of years in the traffic exchange market and those that have persevered are the best our market has to offer, the old cliche that the cream always rises to the top has proven true yet again and what we have left are a group of people who have the mindset and what it takes to create absolutely amazing services, but the only thing they lack is our support. That’s what the Traffic Exchange market needs. That’s ALL that it needs.

So how do you support them? It’s easy, actually. Like I said earlier, the conversion rates are the cream of the advertising business. You should absolutely not sign up or opt in to anything that you are not genuinely interested in, however the easiest way to support a traffic exchange owner is to focus. Pay attention to the ads that are being displayed, and if something interests you then act upon it. People don’t advertise products or services for their own satisfaction, a lot of people have really incredible products and services that can help make your life easier, I can’t even count high enough to tell you the number of high quality products and services I have found through traffic exchanges, including some delicious jerky.

The second best way to support them is to purchase advertising or upgrades. When a payment processing company struggles and can no longer do business, the websites who use them lose all of their subscriptions, and obviously, the ability to accept payments with that provider. This is generally a fatal blow, as building up network trust and client subscriptions can be an expensive and time consuming process, so if you find value in the services being offered then vote with your wallet by purchasing their services. This is especially vital to the hard working people in our market, our friends in chat, our friends who are just starting businesses, and really for any market.

There are a lot of business owners who are struggling right now, for no reason other than misdoings and illegal activities of payment processing providers. In general, a business fails due to inability to meet the demands of the market, but these people are running successful businesses and being dealt huge blows by third parties. The best thing we can do to help, and for our market in general, is to be active, support, and engage in the traffic exchange market we have all grown to love.